Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama did it while Biden is doing it. You don't wait until the last days of your administration. The PRA requires an administration to file presidential and personal separately from Inauguration Day on. It's one of the briefings an incoming administration gets. The only decisions about personal vs presidential records anyone should be making the last few days of an administration are about records created during the last few days of an administration. But yeah, of course Trump didn't do that. NARA archivists will spend years organizing his records, if not taping together torn records or curating records that had been dropped in the toilet. As a former DHS undersecretary under Trump noted yesterday, “I found the indictment to be a really vivid picture for the American public of what the national security community dealt with for four years when he was president, he had a blatant disregard, just did not care to follow the rules..."
How can he not do time? You can't trust him for anything he is a security risk every single day of his life. AND **** ANYONE THAT VOTED FOR HIM - because it was EVIDENT to anyone that did any research that he was such a risk. ****ING IDIOTS In this country. DD
I'm all about the marketplace of ideas and open discussion, but there are some folks who are not about that at all, so the question becomes, how many people are persuaded by those statements, memes, talking points, etc., and how much energy and time is it worth to knock down all the BS all the time with the thought you might reach a few open-minded people who just happen to be leaning towards crazy at that very moment about that very issue? I once thought it was important (see my posts from 2000-2008 or so) but I now don't think it's worth the time or energy. The payoff is just too small and the trolls demanding that you engage with them is a strategy to keep you chasing after one truth while they spout more crap. It's deliberate. In recent years, I have put much more energy into organizing and supporting candidates and causes than arguing with trolls. I suggest everyone else do the same. That said, I do drop in here on occasion and follow some Righties on social media just so I know what's spewing and can react and counter in real life, but constantly engaging in "debate" on this or some other forum or social media? No, not anymore.
There's the Rogerian method for persuading skeptical audiences, and then there's the DaDakotian method. At least it doesn't take a whole book to explain, I guess.
As per Jonathan Turley, Legal Analyst for Fox News Turley said the evidence laid out against Trump in the indictment revealed last week is “quite strong.” “some of the evidence is coming from his former counsel, and these are very damaging statements made against him. It may be hard to move those.” “All the government has to do is stick the landing on one count, and he could have a terminal sentence. You’re talking about crimes that have a 10- or 20-year period as a maximum.”
From a source and an author I recognize. That's a nice change. Oh, Nixon was a real b*stard. So was John Mitchell. While I agree with some of what Dershowitz says, making the comparison, I think that he greatly underestimates the criminal act trump committed by taking very large amounts of highly classified defense department documents to his abode in Florida and not only leaving it unsecured, but showing it to others. While his intent may have been to preen and puff himself up before others, and whether he had other ideas as well, we currently don't know, what trump did do was make it known that he possessed these state secrets in his home. As evidence has shown, a huge amount of it was parked in a bathroom. It wouldn't surprise me if it was accessed by one or more of our enemies by their intelligence services. It's also possible that someone in trump's employ could have photographed large amounts of the materials for financial gain and sold it. There are those who would pay a great deal to get their hands on it. What a bizarre national embarrassment. I don't post down here nearly as often as I used to and for much the same reasons you point out. We've recently had a few "old timers" show up and post, however. It's encouraging, but I wonder if they'll stick around when they take the time to post an opinion and the member they responded to doesn't reply at all, or tosses out either an "lol" or some strange conspiracy theory that makes absolutely no sense. It gets tiresome quickly.
It would be professional malfeasance if the intelligence operations for the Saudis, Israel, Russia, China, UK, France, India, etc. didn't have every document that was kept at MAL. Probably the easiest stash they've ever accessed. Workers, guests, parties, weddings... just too many opportunities to get the stuff.
That's what I've been thinking. I can easily imagine trump getting on the phone and bragging about having this material, not that word of it couldn't get out in other ways and very likely did.
https://dersh.substack.com/p/what-if-both-trump-and-his-prosecutors What If Both Trump and His Prosecutors Are Guilty? ALAN DERSHOWITZ JUN 12, 2023 The most intriguing question—legal, political, and moral—about the Trump indictment can best be understood through the vehicle of several hypotheticals: What if a white Southern prosecutor announced that he would only investigate crimes committed by blacks; he then devoted all of his resources to looking for black crimes and none to white crimes; as a result he uncovered evidence of a crime committed by a black citizen. Would the selective prosecution of the black person be legally valid under the equal-protection clause of the Constitution? Would it be morally acceptable? Would it depend on the nature and seriousness of the crime? Would it depend on whether similar crimes had been committed by whites and not prosecuted? Now change the hypothetical slightly. It is a prosecutor elected on the Democratic ticket or appointed by a Democrat; he announces that he will investigate only crimes committed by Republicans; and his selective investigation turns up a crime committed by a Republican. Finally, a third and most relevant, “hypothetical”: a prosecutor elected or appointed by Democrats announces that he is focusing his investigation on the leader of the Republican Party, who is running against the incumbent Democratic president; and his selective investigation uncovers an actual crime by that Republican. It’s the third hypothetical that troubles many objective observers, including moderate Democrats as well as Republicans, because it seems clear that Donald Trump has been and is being targeted. In 1940, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson warned against such selective targeting: With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. Some will argue that regardless of the means used, special counsel John Smith did uncover evidence—some out of Trump’s own mouth and the mouths and pens of his lawyers—that proves his guilt. Would they make the same argument about strong evidence uncovered by the racist prosecutor who only investigated black (or Jewish, or gay, or Catholic, or Muslim) crime? If not, how would they distinguish the cases? Would they deny that Trump was targeted? Both Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on “get Trump” platforms, and special counsel Smith was assigned a specific target: namely, Donald Trump. Would they argue that racial targeting is worse than partisan political targeting? Would they assert that Trump deserved to be targeted? Would they condemn the targeting and perhaps punish the targetors, but at the same time prosecute the guilty targeted person? These are issues worthy of serious debate in a society committed to equal justice. As Smith said in his post-indictment news conference: “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.” But Smith’s job isn’t to apply the law equally to all. It is to investigate only one person and to indict and prosecute him if the selectively obtained evidence warrants it—regardless of whether others may have committed comparable crimes. I have long opposed the appointment of special counsel to investigate and prosecute targeted individuals. Just as to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so to a special prosecutor, evidence points to his target. Investigating events—such as Iran-Contra—is different. Had Smith been appointed to probe the mishandling of classified material by all former high-ranking officials—not just Trump, but also President Biden, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others—and had found that only Trump violated the law, then he could credibly say that the law applies equally to everyone. But by investigating only one such official and prosecuting him without any comparison to others, his claim of equal justice rings hollow. Moreover, Smith went further than other prosecutors in seeking to vitiate the lawyer-client privilege. The judges have supported him—mistakenly in my view—and much of his case rests on disclosures made by Trump’s lawyers. Other subjects of investigations haven’t had their confidential communications challenged under comparable circumstances. This too raises questions about the equal application of the law. So the questions raised by the indictment of Trump go beyond whether the evidence gathered against him rises to the level of prosecutable crimes; they raise issues of process and equal justice. Some of these issues may be tried in a court of law. But even those that don’t raise justiciable claims may raise moral and political concerns that should be subject to debate in the court of public opinion.
There are pics of boxes in the bathroom but no pics of what's INSIDE the boxes. And we are to simply believe that the boxes were full of classified material. I hope the jury isn't THAT stupid.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps...ment-2024-59849a8e?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s Trump’s Indictment May Pull Us Back From the Brink But if we’re stuck with a rematch between him and Biden in the 2024 presidential election, the losing side is sure to call it illegitimate. By Gerard Baker June 12, 2023 at 2:55 pm ET If you perused Twitter, sampled a cross-section of our leading newspapers, or dipped randomly in and out of the ever-rising tower of Babel on cable, talk radio and podcasts in the past few days, you were given a vivid demonstration of the binary principle on which our political discourse now operates. You have the impression that approximately half the people of this country regard the federal indictment of Donald Trump as the greatest affirmation of republican democracy since the surrender at Appomattox, while the other half view it as the greatest abuse of power since George III tried to levy a stamp tax on his colonial subjects. One lachrymose letter-writer to the New York Times, Dody Osborne Cox of Guilford, Conn., captured the former sentiment perfectly in a missive directed at the prosecutor: “Jack Smith, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for believing in our country. Thank you for trying to uphold our democracy. Thank you for your courage. I have tears in my eyes. You have restored my hope. Grateful. Stay well.” Any moist eyes on Mr. Trump’s side are tears of hot rage. “It’s disgusting,” Linda Clapper, 75, of Plum Borough, Pa., told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I think they’re after him and going to do anything they can to stop his momentum.” I suspect I am not alone in doubting whether this is an accurate picture of the distribution of the moral sentiment of Americans as they ponder this latest step down into the national political abyss. I would bet that most decent Americans are sufficiently enlightened and flexible to hold two wholly consistent thoughts in their heads at the same time: First, that Mr. Smith’s case against Mr. Trump is a devastating charge sheet that, if validated in court, suggests behavior by a former president so recklessly indifferent to U.S. national security, so contemptuous of the law, and so preening and vain as to be—on its own, aside from anything else we may have ever heard or read about this man—disqualifying for any public office, let alone the highest in the land. Second, that the decision by Joe Biden’s Justice Department to pursue a criminal case against Mr. Biden’s predecessor and likely opponent is a radical and dangerous overreach, a fateful move that can only undermine public faith in the law, and a troubling suggestion of selective justice, following the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the proliferating evidence of a lack of prosecutorial zeal by this administration over investigations relating to the president’s own family. This is more than a guess on my part. A solid bloc of Americans are appalled by and tired of being confronted with yet more evidence of Mr. Trump’s dishonesty, moral turpitude and utter shamelessness, and the current president’s chicanery, divisive opportunism and rising unfitness. A new ABC/Ipsos poll finds less than one-third of American voters have a favorable view of each man. So what? Voters have to make a choice. Choices are always binary. In the end the majority of voters who aren’t fans of either man will have to decide whose flaws are greater. The presidential ballot doesn’t allow for a nuanced moral calculus. This view holds that the likeliest outcome of this latest legal bombshell will be to polarize further and make it even likelier that the least appealing outcome for most Americans—a rerun of 2020—is what they will face. The move will further energize motivated Republicans to get out and vote for Mr. Trump; while the prospect of a rematch will propel enough Democrats to swallow their doubts and send Mr. Biden in for one more tilt. I find myself doubting this conventional wisdom and for the first time in a while starting to wonder whether the latest developments might bring a reprieve from zero-sum partisan warfare. The problem is that we know for sure now that a Trump-Biden rematch will never end the national standoff. Whoever wins is now guaranteed a judgment of illegitimacy. If Mr. Trump loses, his supporters can claim—more credibly than in 2020—that the election was stolen, that his candidacy was hobbled by the endless criminalization of politics. If Mr. Biden loses, chances are, given the law’s delay, that Mr. Trump would be both president-elect and a defendant in a series of criminal cases. Democrats will treat him as ipso facto illegitimate. On top of this, either man would be constitutionally limited to one more term in the White House, further guaranteeing that 2024 will be nothing more than a massive and dangerous roadblock on the path to any sort of American progress. There is no escape from this outcome—a presidential election that produces a hollow and Pyrrhic victory—unless one or both parties’ voters cut the Gordian knot and free the country from this debilitating and demoralizing political and legal warfare. This latest occasion for partisan anger may, strangely, offer us a chance for its own redemption. "I would bet that most decent Americans are sufficiently enlightened and flexible to hold two wholly consistent thoughts in their heads at the same time." exactly
Then there's the reputational damage. Here are some comments by a former federal prosecutor who has worked on intelligence issues: _____ The narrative here is one of betrayal of a nation and its most precious secrets by a man who was the commander in chief for four years and who seeks that mantle again. There's never been anything remotely like it. Just think about it. The disregard for the lives, the risk and the individual courage that goes into gathering information vital to our national security and our safety is incomprehensible. There is no way for the brain to wrap itself around what is described in this indictment, the violation of sacred trust, a one-man demolition crew working against the American intelligence system that has been built, brick by brick, over 80 years. With the kind of conduct alleged in the indictment by the former occupant of the highest office in the land, how is any foreign intelligence service supposed to trust us to keep information confidential, to protect its methods of collecting our enemies' secrets or the identity of its sources? It could take years, if not decades, to recover from the damage. _____ https://www.salon.com/2023/06/12/ne...former-prosecutor-on-the-historic-indictment/
It's shocking. It really is, and it's hard to believe that there are people here going to great lengths (well, @Os Trigonum is, at any rate) to find excuses for what trump did, and/or the "well, they did it too!" columns by fellows like Dershowitz. Most just post a short comment, but make clear that they still support trump. Yes, it's a minority of the country who are in lockstep with the former president, but they are supporting the assault on our right to vote in several states where those they voted for control the statehouse and the legislature. Including my State of Texas. Doing a lot more than making it more difficult to vote. They are attacking women's rights and the rights of a broad cross-section of minorities, and they brag about doing it.
A jury of ex-presidents? No, but Trump’s fate will be decided by 12 citizen peers, in a hallowed tradition of US democracy https://theconversation.com/a-jury-...n-a-hallowed-tradition-of-us-democracy-207384 excerpt: . . . like all federal defendants, Trump will be protected by the Sixth Amendment’s right to a jury trial. That right, to have a jury of 12 citizens render judgment on his case, protects Trump from the government’s overstepping citizens’ limits on its power – a dynamic that is often lost in the political sound and fury over his state and federal indictments. more at the link
The ones that aren't redacted are listed in the indictment. It is pretty detailed what some of the classifications and subject matter are that Trump was hiding.
